Monday, October 25, 2010

Reality Imitates Strat or Strat Halucinations

Sitting in the aftermath of the NLCS and as a lifelong Phillies fan, this article is painful to write. I have been playing strat since the 1980's and have been a Phillies fan since earlier than that. I have had strat teams that won 120+ games and lost 105 games and everything in the middle. I have seen things which defied explanation and statistics as we all have.

I have come to expect the unexpected in the NASBL feeder program known as Major League Baseball. There were a couple of situations that I had to see what the strat probabilities were.

The first situation was in the top of the 7th inning in game 5. The Phils had 1st and 3rd with one out. Ross Gload was at the plate batting against Tim "hit me again" Lincecum. Ross Gload lined out to 1b Aubrey Huff who stepped on 1st for the double play. Lincecum does not have a natural double play on his card vsL while Gload does have a line out max at 1-12 vsR. This likelihood equates to 0.46% chance. As it turns out, this play did not affect the outcome of the game, but nevertheless it was quite unlikely.

The second situation was in the bottom of the 8th inning in game 6 with the Phils trailing 3-2 in both the game and the series. Lincecum did not toke up enough prior to entering the game and retired only one of the first three batters he faced. In comes closer Brian Wilson with one out, men on 1st and 2nd with Carlos Ruiz at the plate. In a disappointing turn of events, Ruiz hits a screaming line drive to 1b Aubrey Huff who then throws to second to complete the double play. Wilson does not have any double plays on his card vsR and Ruiz has only one on his card at 2-2 vsR. This equates to the same 0.46% chance as the previous game.

This is the point where my knowledge of strat allows me to not damage my television by throwing beer at it. I have been involved in series' and games like this while playing and know that these outcomes should be expected almost as much as a Ryan Howard strikeout with the game on the line. I am happy to report that life continues as before, but I am now officially counting down the days until spring training starts next year.

2 comments:

LCC said...

That is awesome. I feel like Hal needs to read this post.

Haymakers said...

Really great article!